Thread: Spirit To Charge For Carry-On Luggage

"In addition to reducing fares even further, this will reduce the number of carry-on bags, which will improve inflight safety and efficiency by speeding up the boarding and deplaning process, all of which ultimately improve the overall customer experience," Chief Operating Officer Ken McKenzie said in a statement.

Doubt very seriously he's ever worked the ticket counter to collect baggage fees or boarded a full outbound flight on a tight turn time with aisle chairs... doubt very much he did a lot of market research on this either, as most customers I speak to at the ticket counter hate bag fees, think they are a huge airline rip off, and would (alledgely) pay $15 more for their fares as long as there were no first bag fees... what our customers want is fair value at a fair price, with no "hidden" fees...

In a recent article in U.S. News & World Report (“Will the United-Continental Merger Raise Airfares?”, 3 May 2010), Ben Baden writes: [H]e believes consumers may have been spoiled in recent years. “It’s kind of misleading to be talking about the fact that prices might go up for an industry that’s lost $60 billion in the past ten years. In some respects, maybe there has to be some realization on the part of consumers that it costs more to fly than what they’ve been paying."